John 4:31–38

In the meantime His disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”

But He said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

His disciples are worried about food. Jesus couldn’t care less. Why? Because He was sent. For Jesus, it’s always about why He was sent. “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.”

The rest of this passage sounds like He’s changing the subject, but He’s not. The work Jesus is to finish is all about harvesting. If his disciples would just lift up their eyes, they would see that the fields are already white for harvest!

Jesus is not talking about agriculture here; He’s talking about people and harvesting is bringing them into the kingdom of heaven. That’s pretty familiar stuff.

But we often don’t think about the fact that Jesus and the disciples aren’t in Israel when He says this. They’re in Samaria. The fields He wants His disciples to “lift up their eyes and look at” are gentile fields.

The spread of the gospel to all the earth begins in this passage.

“Lift up your eyes and look,” (or “and see”) is a common phrase in Aramaic (sah-nah eye-neh-kha oo-ri-ay), which is the language Jesus was speaking here. God says this to Jacob in Genesis 31:12.

And he said, “Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.”

This phrase has an “open your eyes and see what’s right in from of you” feel to it. In other words, “Stop being blind.”

Of course, at this point, Jesus’s disciples aren’t thinking about saving the Samaritans. They’re just trying to get Him to Galilee before He starves to death. So Jesus is telling them to stop being blind in more ways than one. The idea that going through Samaria is anything more than a shortcut is completely strange to them.

By now they surely know that Jesus is sent; they just have a small vision of why.

These Monday—Friday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. To subscribe to all the DEEPs click here:

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.